This invention relates to a roulette playing device played by releasing a ball into one of a number of ball pockets bearing betting marks.
The prior art of the field this invention belongs to is described in, e.g., Japanese Patent Publication Nos. 18072/1984 and 8704/1986.
The prior art roulette playing device comprises a roulette wheel, a circular runway and a circular wall, as major members. The roulette wheel is positioned at the center of the device and has a plurality of ball pockets bearing betting marks. The roulette wheel is whirled by a separate motor or other means. The circular runway surrounds the roulette wheel and has the running surface declined radially inward. The circular wall is set up from the outer boundary of the runway and is continuous therearound. A ball is let out from a release opening formed in the circular wall.
But in the conventional device described in Japanese Patent Publication No. 18072/1984 described above, a ball is released by a hitting device including an air pressure feeding mechanism. In order to release the ball at a high initial speed, the hitting device has to be large. In the hitting device using a bouncing force of a spring, it is impossible to cause a hit ball to spin at a constant speed or control the direction, speed, etc. of spin of the hit ball. In the case, for example, where a release passage is curved, it sometimes happens that the ball reduces its speed due to the resistance caused by touching portions of the interior surface of the release passage. Consequently, the ball which is hit and released onto the circular runway from the release opening is sometimes slow and does not always have a constant speed. This spoils roulette games.
On the other hand, games are played on the roulette playing device by players putting betting coins into slots formed in the device, anticipating the ball pocket identified by a betting mark into which the ball will go. Before and after release of the ball, putting betting coins into the slots is prohibited.
In the prior art device, the prohibition of putting betting coins into slots (NO BETTING) is timed manually, i.e., by an operator of a game center. That is, an operator watches the ball running on the circular runway to push a NO BETTING button or the like so as to timely reject the betting coins put in after the operation of the NO BETTING button. For automatic NO BETTING operation, it is proposed to reject the betting coins put in within a certain period of time from release of the ball.
In the device in which the NO BETTING operation is made manually by an operator, it is necessary for an operator to always attend to the device. The timing of the NO BETTING operation is irregular depending on surroundings, etc. in a game center. In the device in which the NO BETTING operation is automatically made after a certain period of time from release of the ball, the operation is badly timed when the ball goes astray.
Japanese Patent Publication No. 8704/1986 referred to above discloses the art of disposing ball sensors along the circular runway. But the sensors are for accelerating the ball with magnetic force and not for timing the NO BETTING operation.